attack on titan

THE SERIES THAT RUINED MY LIFE

Since this site is above all a character shrine (rather than a general series info resource), this page is not intended to be an in-depth summary of the entire plot, or the other characters—for that, you might consider poking around the Wikia. With that said, I feel like it would be kind of awkward to just start waxing idiotic about a character without at least going over the series from which he came. This page will sum up the progress of the series prior to Levi's appearance, after which all information will be found under the 'Story' heading.

Shingeki no Kyojin (lit. "advancing giants," though the official English title is Attack on Titan) is a monthly manga series written and drawn by Isayama Hajime. It began in 2009 and spawned an anime adaptation in Spring 2013. Both the manga and the anime are currently ongoing.

ON THAT DAY, HUMANITY REMEMBERED...

Hey, wouldn't it totally suck if we weren't on top of the food chain anymore? This series should answer that question for you pretty quickly. After a hundred years of peace in the shadows of three enormous, concentric walls, humanity had grown complacent. Most didn't even think about the reason the walls were there in the first place: the outside world was crawling with titans. Giant, humanoid man-eaters. Still, "giant" though they may have been, those walls were fifty meters tall. Nothing to worry about, right?

Wrong!

One fateful day in the year 845, a titan appeared that was so large it could see over the outermost wall (Maria). This was generally regarded as bad news. That titan, known from then on as the "colossal titan," kicked a hole in Wall Maria, allowing the titans to enter humanity's territory and finally partake in the buffet for which they had waited in line for a century. It wasn't pretty. The district behind the portion of the wall destroyed by the colossal titan, Shiganshina, was the home of our plucky protagonist, Eren Yeager—a brash and passionate ten year-old boy with dreams of joining the military and exploring the world outside the wall. On the day of the breach, Eren watched as his own mother was devoured by a titan. This, perhaps understandably, pissed him off. So pissed off was Eren Jaeger that he vowed to exterminate every last titan himself. As he, foster sister Mikasa Ackerman, and best friend Armin Arlert escaped Shiganshina, another unusual "armored" titan appeared and destroyed the gate between the district and the rest of the Wall Maria territory. With the outermost wall now completely breached, humanity suffered a devastating loss of life, and the survivors were forced to retreat into the saftey of the second wall (Rose).

THE 104TH TRAINEES SQUAD

After biding their time for two more years until they were old enough, the three of them enlisted in the military as part of the 104th trainees squad. Over the next three years, the group trained vigorously in a wide variety of disciplines; most importantly, they became adept at utilizing the three-dimensional maneuver gear, or 3DMG (convenient info-graphic). Due to the strange, regenerative power the titans possess, there's only one sure way to kill them—hacking a sizeable chunk out of the back of their necks. That combined with their size necessitates a little ingenuity when it comes to fighting them. The 3DMG is a complicated system of gas, grappling hooks, and a whole lot of belts that would probably be better explained by that graphic I linked up there than by me, so I'll just stop while I'm ahead. Anyway, three years later, in the year 850, the 104th trainees squad finally completed their training. They were then faced with a choice: they could join the Stationary Guard (sometimes referred to as the "garrison") and patrol and repair the walls; the Survey Corps (sometimes known as the "recon corps" or "scouting legion") and explore and engage the titans beyond the walls; or the Military Police and enforce the law. Because of the supposed prestige of the Military Police (and the luxury of living within the innermost wall, Sina), the opportunity to join was only given to the top ten graduates—a dangerous contradiction, considering that by that logic the ones most equipped to fight titans were the least likely to ever encounter them.

However, their decision was put on hold when disaster struck once again. Imagine that!

TROST GETS SPANKED

Before Eren could even finish being smug about finally being part of humanity's counterattack, shit hit the fan once more. And who better to crash the party than that sixty meter skinless weirdo from five years ago, the colossal titan? The enormous titan appeared out of nowhere and kicked a hole in the wall (because that's kind of his thing), exposing the Trost district to another disastrous titan invasion. This time, Eren thought, things would be different. This time, he was ready to do some damage.

Except, as it turned out, he wasn't. An extremely unfortunate (and disturbing) chain of events culminated in Eren heroically saving Armin from being eaten, but only before being eaten himself. Could this be the end for our crazy, hot-blooded hero?

Well, no, actually. You see, as it was later revealed, Eren has the ability to become a titan himself. Plot twist! I'm sure it had nothing to do with the sketchy injection his father gave him when he was younger that causes convenient memory loss. In any case, after flopping around in the titan's stomach being SUPER pissed off about everything and cursing the titans with what would have been his last breath, Eren transformed into a fifteen meter titan and busted right out of the one that swallowed him. It was really quite metal. While Eren in titan form stomped around beating the everloving shit out of every titan he could get his hands on, the surviving soldiers used that anomaly to their advantage and restocked on the supplies they would not have been able to access if not for the rogue titan going around punching everything. Afterwards, as the strange titan finally ran out of steam and collapsed, a handful of them watched in awe as a living human body rose from the back of the titan's neck. (It was Eren, if you haven't been paying attention.)

Eren awoke some time later to discover that the Stationary Guard was one last-minute rescue away from blowing him, Mikasa, and Armin into bits with a cannon. Bad news. He managed to partially shift back into a titan to protect them from the blow, but that only pissed the Guard off more. Fortunately, he piqued the interest of a Guard commander, Pixis, and that alone saved the three of them for the time being. Pixis, willing to take the chance that Eren (in titan form) could be an ally to humanity after all, assigned Eren the task of transporting a giant boulder that had landed inside Trost to the hole the colossal titan made in the wall, effectively closing the breach. Unsure of what would happen but with little other choice, Eren accepted.

Long story short, the operation was a disaster (are you starting to see a pattern here?), but after a lot of struggling and even more dead people Eren finally managed to plop the boulder down and seal off the hole. He then became unresponsive in his titan form, and while Armin eventually managed to "wake him up" so he could return to his human form and escape, it was already too late— titans were fast approaching and they were in no position to do anything about it. Things weren't looking good for our heroes. Who could save them now, I wonder?